“Missouri’s college students should be allowed to learn and exchange ideas in an environment free from the threat of concealed guns,” University of Missouri System President Gary Forsee said in a news release Thursday. “It is hard to imagine that such a proposal could gain support given the magnitude of gun-related tragedies experienced on college campuses across the country.”

Yes, it is hard to imagine, given the illogical hysteria on the subject, much of it fed by the media. And of course, the police are unhappy:

MU Police Chief Jack Watring said at the MU Faculty Council meeting Thursday that he was opposed to the legislation.

“I don’t think most students in an educational environment need a weapon,” he said.

Well, you know what? Most students wouldn’t have one. Most students won’t bother to get the permit. But they’ll be free riders, and safer, because of the few who have one now, or will get one in the wake of this law passing, because they’ll now be able to use it. As Eugene Volokh notes, not allowing students to carry on campus effectively prevents them from carrying much of anywhere, and it’s a violation of a fundamental human right:

Many universities ban firearms, but some research I’ve been doing reveals that some universities ban firearms and stun guns and chemical defensive sprays, either in dorm rooms or in the university as a whole. This basically leaves students entirely without any defensive weapons, and also has the effect of disarming dorm residents when they go off campus property, since they have no place to store the defensive weapons when they’re back on campus.

This strikes me as quite shocking, especially with regard to women students who are in the age range where the danger of rape is at its highest. The university basically leaves them as sitting ducks, unless they’re willing to violate the university policy. Even if the university tries to compensate by offering a good deal of on-campus policing (some do and some don’t), it surely can’t protect the students when they leave campus.

It should be shocking, but it isn’t. And listen to this next excuse:

Watring said…that the biggest concern with the concealed carry provision is the tactical problems it would create, such as the ability for police to identify a suspect in a situation where many people are carrying weapons.

That’s not an argument against allowing guns on campus. There is nothing unique about a college campus in that regard. It’s an argument against allowing concealed carry anywhere. Which is, of course, what many law-enforcement types would like, because it gives them more power over the sheep.

And it’s a stupid argument, to boot. I’m pretty sure that if there’s a mass shooting, it’s not that hard to figure out who the suspect is — it’s the guy shooting lots of people. And if this law passes, in most cases, if history is any guide, by the time the police arrive the shooting will be over, and the suspect subdued or dead, as was the case at the Appalachian University Law School, or the Colorado Springs church shooting, or the numerous other times when there were armed law-abiding citizens present. The only time that the police have to deal with a live, armed shooter is when everyone else has been disarmed (Columbine, Virginia Tech, etc.), because that’s the only circumstance in which he can continue the murder spree for the many minutes that it always takes police to arrive.

And of course, as always, we have the usual slander against CCW permit holders:

But Rep. Chris Kelly, D-Columbia, said he was worried about the possible combination of drinking and weapons on college campuses.

“College boys who round up 25 opossums half drunk can do amazingly interesting things with fireworks, bottles of gasoline, with all kinds of interesting devices,” Kelly said.

“Fraternity boys are a very inventive lot, let’s make sure we give ’em guns to play with too,” he added with sarcasm.

I wonder if Rep. Kelly can put together a correlation matrix between people who have been diligent and responsible enough to go through the process of getting a concealed weapons permit, and inebriated pyromaniacal frat boys? Because I’ll bet it’s pretty damned negative. I also wonder why he thinks that people who would engage in such drunken antics would have any qualms about possessing illegal guns on campus?

Stupidity and illogic continues to abound. And if this bill fails, and there is a mass shooting on a Missouri campus, we’ll know just who to blame this time.

[Sunday morning update]

A commenter indicates that I probably painted law enforcement types with too broad a brush, and he’s probably right:

I am a police officer and I would like to clarify a few misconceptions. If you ask any police chief about their position on concealed carry legislation you will get the same answer that you would get if you ask a political appointee. This is because most are elected or appointed by and serving at the pleasure of a politician. Most officers, myself included, support concealed carry. We know better than most how long it takes for us to arrive and just how long each second is in a tragedy such as a school shooting. We also understand that the sick and twisted out there among us won’t leave their weapons at home before a killing spree because they might get in trouble for concealing.

My apologies to any other officers who think I mischaracterized their position on the issue. Most probably are sensible on this issue, even if they can’t publicly say so.

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43 thoughts on “An Attempt At Common Sense In MO”

I see that the leadership style Gary Forsee applied to Sprint as its CEO is now in effect at MU. If he is somehow able to evade the new law, I urge Missourian parents to remove their children from that institution at the earliest opportunity. OTOH, he’s not at Sprint any more, so no need to cancel your subscription, if you still have one. ;^)

Colleges and ships. Both without guns… strange that they both start to get targeted because they have unarmed folks in them. And yet the right to defend yourself comes from the Law of Nature, not the laws of man. How strange that we try to take away the positive liberty of self-defense to make us all victims in certain areas of life.

Josh’s comment is one of the most insightful I’ve ever seen on this subject. Real pressure is economic pressure and no college president has any principles with a dollar under his nose. (Right now, they think more parents will steer students to schools that disarm students and rely on dumb luck and Providence for student safety). If parents start asking on site visits about student safety, and downcheck schools with policies like these, even the thick skulls of academe will start getting the message.

I might add, in reference to Mr. Watring, that the average guy who becomes a leader of campus cops is not there because it offered him the best place to bring his great talents to bear on fighting crime. He’s there because he didn’t get in at the real cops. (Or, in some cases, got thrown out of the real cops).

Campus cops like Watring will be there in time to draw a chalk outline around your kid’s cold body, and administrators like Gary Forsee will pledge to keep the student safe, until your wrongful death lawsuit — when he’ll explain he didn’t really mean it, and can’t possibly be held to such a direct construction of an indirect promise. Not now that it costs him money to have dropped the ball.

“…if there’s a mass shooting, it’s not that hard to figure out who the suspect is — it’s the guy shooting lots of people.”

Of course, with concealed carry goes the caveat that by the time police arrive, some armed citizen may have the shooter cornered, or bleeding out. I recently took the CCW class and I am waiting for my permit to come back right now. If I am somewhere and a shooting occurs, I will protect myself first, and certainly try to protect others also. That’s the mindset I heard again and again during class and at breaks. Contrary to MSM hype, I didn’t see or hear one person looking to be a Wyatt Earp style hero or a Columbine style shooter.

It seems to me that the second argument is a tacit acknowledgment that the first argument doesn’t work. If guns are truly not allowed on campus, then the police need not worry about confusing legal carry permit holders with an active shooter.

The hysteria in Texas, which is considering revoking universities’ current option to ban guns on campus even to licensed holders, is pronounced. Repeated references in student editorials to “students being allowed to carry guns” and “people without any firearms training whatsover carrying guns on campus” obscure the truth.

For some reason, the editorial writers are assuming

(a) the law would allow ALL students (and not just CCW holders) to carry firearms on campus,
(b) concealed firearms are NOT being illegally carried on campus now,
(c) that they would know that legal firearms (which are, by definition, concealed) are being carried, and that this knowledge would cause them distress.

(a) is the easiest to address. Getting a Texas CCW requires the holder to be 21 years old. In that respect, most undergraduates wouldn’t qualify anyhow; by the time they satisfied the requirements, they would have graduated. (Not to mention that getting the CCW requires training, etc.)

There is, potentially, an argument [which might be true, but unproven] that needs to be addressed: that there is some random risk that a licensed, legal firearm holder might lose his/her sanity while carrying the firearm on campus whereas their previous, sane, law-abiding self would have not carried the firearm onto the campus, and therefore would be unable to act on their new insanity. This seems to be the only reasonable argument against the bill.

What amazes me is the contrast between (b) and (c). It seems that the students don’t KNOW that illegal guns are being carried, they feel safe — whereas if they KNEW that legal guns were being carried, they would feel unsafe.

I will worry about police misidentifying a CCWer and shooting him if it actually ever happens. To date, there is no evidence this is nothing but a statist fantasy like the wild west scenario.

I know if I had just removed an active shooter, the next thiing I would do is call or have someone else call 911 with a request for an APB with my exact description and to inform everyone I am a no-shoot.

I am a police officer and I would like to clarify a few misconceptions. If you ask any police chief about their position on concealed carry legislation you will get the same answer that you would get if you ask a political appointee. This is because most are elected or appointed by and serving at the pleasure of a politician. Most officers, myself included, support concealed carry. We know better than most how long it takes for us to arrive and just how long each second is in a tragedy such as a school shooting. We also understand that the sick and twisted out there among us wont leave there weapons at home before a killing spree because they might get in trouble for concealing.
All I ask is that if you carry,, practice, practice and then put a note on the calender to practice sometime in the future. Your skills are perishable and you won’t have time to think about the basics if the unthinkable happens. In closing I would also recommend that you gun-proof your children. Yes, I know, I said gun-proof your children. Child-proofing your guns also has its place but then if your not a moron you already have considered that.

The problem with passing pro-concealed carry laws for campuses is that the staff members are the same people who supported the D.C. gun ban-a law which, after barely a glance, proves itself to be a highly bizzarre piece of legislature. The DC gun ban includes many measures along the lines of “Registration of all firearms is illegal”. I kid you not: the law intended to strengthen gun control literally includes measures that counteract the effectiveness of the rest of the law. It’s honestly as if the lawmakers heard the words “guns” and “firearms” and went into an almost religious frenzy of righteous banning.

When you get right down to it, almost all of these objections are purely emotional. All you have to do to see this is to examine their statements, which are invariably filled with emotionally loaded language like “bloodbath”, “endangered safety”, and similar. They seem to be falling prey to the “Special Pleading Fallacy” (It’s described best on http://www.cracked.com, though it actually is a psychological condition). They have stated before that only police and military should be allowed to carry firearms. However, the anti-gun officials regularly ignore the fact that the skills that make police and military “qualified” to carry firearms are just that-skills which can be learned and practiced by anyone and everyone who has the time and motivation to do so. If these anti-gun folks unwound enough to give us “gun-tottin’, bloody-minded, knuckle-dragging” rednecks a fair trial-by-fire (i.e., let us have concealed carry licenses, held back the anti-gun propaganda, and stopped skewing the results of studies), they’d find that most of us are actually decent citizens who know how and when to properly use a firearm for self-defense, instead of the closet mass-murderers they say we are.

At the university where I work, there is a state law which bans concealed weapons from campuses. After I remarked in a meeting that such a law was unenforceable, a faculty member (in Journalism) came up to me afterwards and asked why I thought it was unenforceable. She seemed surprised when I pointed out that unless all students (and their vehicles) were searched and frisked, there was no way to know if they had a gun concealed in a purse, backpack, car, or truck. She acknowledged that there are students who hunt who might leave guns in their trucks, but didn’t seem to have thought about any of these possibilities generally.

Anything that complicates the planning process of someone intent to do harm is helpful to the rest of us. The “not knowing” about firearms in a school (or airplane) is a deterrent. The more deterrents, the less mayhem.

For jack l.
I have a CCW and sometimes ‘carry’ and agree with the comments to this article.
Last week, one of our county sherriffs stated that a ‘gun in the hand is better than a cop on the phone.’

As a retired AF officer who ‘carried’ during more than 350 combat missions my comfort level goes up when I note that some one in the group is armed.

I have noticed that when I ‘carry,’ my behavior changes; I am more observant of all of the ‘rules’ that govern our lives, from speeding, j-walking, what I can drink and where it can be drunk, etc. The weapon that I carry is for the defense of me and those I am with. The ‘weapon’ IS NOT to be cause for anyone to react to me carrying it.

“I don’t like The Pope telling me who and how
i choose my sleeping partners.”

He doesn’t. He tells you what he believes the repercussions of your free will choices will be.

“I don’t think people without kids in schools are
exactly involved in the downside of educational policy change.”

Really. So I don’t have to pay any taxes to support them? I don’t have to live under any laws they are indoctrinated to support? Fantastic.

“If Rand isn’t a CCW permit holder and Gun Owner,
well, then it just seems like he’s engaging in Social
Engineering without having any skin in the game.”

It would see to be that if you are a shallow thinker. Are you a shallow thinker? I very rarely participate in any kind of public protest, yet I am very much pro 1st amendment. I don’t commit crimes, but I have opinions on how jails and prison are run. I don’t invade countries or protect this county personally, but I have opinions on how and why our military is used. I have never developed my own nuclear weapon, but I have strong opinions about other countries developing theirs. And these would be countries I have never been to, or plan on visiting.

The truth of the matter, contra Jack Lee, is that the freedom of gun owners rests on the sympathies, and support for their rights, among non-gun-owners; just as the First Amendment freedoms of those engaged in the practice of a particular religion, or promulgating speech or writings, or peaceably assembling, or petitioning the government for a redress of grievances, rests on the support for those rights among the rest of the population.

Adding “rape!” to the list of reasons for CCWs on college campuses is just another way to put one over on the rubes. A college campus is one of the least likely places for a genuine “rape!” to occur (although the number of false accusations of “rape!” may be higher on college campuses than most other places).

There are honest reasons for supporting CCW on college campuses. Let’s stick to those, ok?

As I said earlier, I will carry concealed. I live in an open carry state and I used to do that, and before even that I was openly vocal about gun control.

I bought my first fire arm, an SKS, just before the idiot ban on them came in. There’s something about being told that I’ll be better off and more protected, if I’m less armed, that sounds utterly ridiculous to me! So I started shooting and practicing and purchasing. You asked Rand the question, several people told you about themselves, Rand answered up front to you, and everyone let you off that same hook, so I’ll ask you, do you own ANY firearms, or are you reverse engineering?

Right on, brother. It’s the same argument made with drugs. People assume that a law banning a certain activity is the only thing dissuading the majority of people from engaging in that activity, and when you lift the ban, of course the floodgates will open. This is government flattering itself pure and simple. As anyone living in an area that allows concealed carrying permits will tell you, even given this option running into someone with a concealed firearm is still a rarity.

i was asked, I have a remington 12 gauge Pump,
Loaded up with 00 buck or a load of dimes and i’ll
cut someone in half if i have to.

I don’t have any hand-irons these days, I spend
too much time in DC, and I was never that good
a shot with a pistol anyways. If i need to protect
myself in close, a ball point pen does a pretty
decent job.

Wes M: I am not, nor have never been in the military / law enforcement but I find your sentiments to be exactly in line with mine.

When I am not carrying I will do things like speed, drink alcohol, j-walk… basically tons of minor infractions because I do not worry about the consequences and accept them.

When I am carrying concealed I pay attention to everything. Follow all of the rules. I am carrying a deadly weapon that has one purpose and that is to protect. I hope to god I never have to shoot anyone. I have invested thousands of dollars through classes, buying my firearm legally, and ammunition. Through firing thousands of rounds with my pistol I have become intimately familiar with it’s behavior. If it becomes necessary to protect, I will not hesitate, I will stop the threat.

Every time I read articles, discussions, comments concerning how horrible guns are I just meander over to google UK and take a look at their murders. They have just as many as the US using things like Knifes, hammers, cars, pipes, etc… I will people would stop being so damned blind and realize that humans kill each other by any means at their disposal. So my question is to those people like Jack.

I don’t choose to be a victim, but, I can do a pretty
good job of protecting myself with out carrying a
pistol, and, my day to day job makes carrying a pistol
very impractical. I go to Government buildings routinely,
so, i can’t keep it with me, anyways, I don’t drive, I
use the subway, so, it’s not like i can leave it in the glove
box, and, frankly a pistol in the trunk isn’t very useful
for protection.